The Sun Will Come Out...Tomorrow

Someone had pity on me and let the sun shine all day yesterday! I escaped the house yesterday. And my mom came down to visit and cheer me up (and to watch my kids so I could escape the house to go to my doctor's appointment). I felt good for the first time in over a week. Yesterday was a glorious day. Yesterday was exactly what I needed to lift my spirits a little bit. We won't talk about what the weather is doing outside right now...we'll just wrap up yesterday's sunshine and hang on to it while we look for better days to come.

I've posted a hundred pictures of this corn field with the mountain in the background...and I'll post a hundred more, I'm sure. I LOVE the location of our house. I couldn't have picked a happier spot for myself then next to this corn field with this mountain behind it. Every time I pull into the driveway and look to the south east I fall in love all over again. Living by a corn field spells out 'home' for me. I hope the farmer who owns this field never sells it.

Some good things did happen during my week of doom and gloom. Most specifically, my husband took great care of us. He is amazing. One of the nights he took the kids swimming all by himself, so that they could have an opportunity to get out of the house and use some energy. Meet the Swan Family Swimmers! Haha. They are dressed in their swim suits with matching Halloween sweats over top, because if the Halloween sweats get lost or stolen at the pool, it's not too great of a loss. They came up with this teamwork technique to get the garage door open so they could go get in the car. It made me laugh.

I finally guilt tripped myself into pulling out the box of Newborn stuff and the box of 0-3 months stuff so see what I had, so I could at least have in my mind what I need. I think I'm pretty good on clothes...I knew I would be. But somewhere all my baby blankets have disappeared. I used to have what felt like a million (and needed them all!) but when pulling out baby stuff, I was only able to find five. And those were five that I had put away because of sentimental value. I have no idea where all my receiving blankets have gone off to. So the other night while Aaron was away helping his parents move boxes and furniture to their new house, I started crocheting around the edge of a new blanket for Oliver. I am not a talented crocheter...this simple pattern is the only trick I have up my sleeve in that department; but it will do, and Oliver will have at least one more blanket.

I also can't remember where I lent out my bouncer to, but I know that it was pretty much on it's last standing leg when Adelia was a baby, so I didn't try super hard to find it (I always thought it was ugly anyway). Instead I ordered Oliver this adorable monkey bouncer. :) It was delivered to my doorstep this afternoon (I love Amazon!) and I am excited about it. All our other kids spent about half their babyhood in the bouncer, and I know that Oliver will be no exception. And since he's the fourth child, I'm happy to be giving him something new of his very own...most everything he gets for his entire life will be a hand-me-down from his brothers...and not that there is anything wrong with that, but I'm glad he'll have something new at least.

Adelia at FFC. She's not doing anything particularly special, but I just happened to look at her while she was sitting there and think how she is such a little cutie and how I wish I could just trap her in a bottle sometimes and keep her little and adorable forever.

We made it to Friday Fun Classes today. We were even early. Go us! Before FFC starts there is a Zumba class in the gym, and since we got there early, my kids got to do some Zumba out in the hallway. They were quite entertaining. I should have pulled my camera out faster, because the video clip I got wasn't very long before they turned the music off, but enough to give you an idea.

I taught Littles Class this morning. We did a Valentine theme for the day. I split the kids into three different groups, and my awesome assistants had activities for the other two groups, so I only had to do one activity. We spend about 10 minutes per activity and then rotate groups. Anyways, today I decided to do Conversation Heart Towers. I gave each kid a mat with six hearts on it, on each heart was a number (2,3,5,6,7,9 were the numbers I chose to put in the hearts, but you could do whatever numbers you wanted to), I also gave them each a box of conversation hearts. The object was to use the hearts to stack a tower as high as the numbers in each heart on the paper. The kids had a pretty easy time doing towers of 2,3, and 5, but only a handful were able to get the balance just right to stack 6. I had one little boy who was bound and determined to stack 9, and he did while holding it up with his hand, but it quickly toppled when he let go.

Lincoln making conversation heart towers